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THOUGHT RELICS 



By 
RABINDRANATH TAGORE 



Chitra 
Sadhana 

GiTANJALI 

Stray Birds 

Nationalism 

Personality 

Reminiscences 

Songs of Kabir 

Fruit Gathering 

The Gardener 

The Post Office 

The Crescent Moon 

The Cycle op Spring 

Stories from Tagore 

Mashi and Other Stories 

Lover's Gift and Crossing 

The Home and the World 

Sacrifice and Other Plays 

GiTANJALI AND FrUIT GATHERING 

The King of the Dark Chamber 

The Hungry Stones and Other Stories 



THOUGHT RELICS 



BY 
"^A RABINDRANATH TAGORE 

AUTHOR OP " GITANJALI," " THE GARDENER," 
" PRXnT GATHERING," ETC. 



•Npw fork 

THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 
1921 






COPTKIGHT, 1921, 

bt the macmillan company 



Set up and eleotrotyped. Published March, 1921. 



APR -6 !B21 

0)CLA6i4091 



THOUGHT RELICS 



I A ST night I dreamt that I was the same 
J boy that I had been before my mother 
died. She sat in a room in a garden house on 
the bank of the Ganges. I carelessly passed by 
without paying attention to her, when all of a 
sudden it flashed through my mind with an un- 
utterable longing that my mother was there. 
At once I stopped and went back to her and 
bowing low touched her feet with my head. 
She held my hand, looked into my face, and 
said: "You have come!" 

In this great world we carelessly pass by the 
room where Mother sits. Her storeroom is 
open when we want our food, our bed is ready 
when we must sleep. Only that touch and that 
voice are wanting. We are moving about, but 
never coming close to the personal presence, 
to be held by the hand and greeted: "You have 
come!" 



IN my early years, I did not know that 
my sight had become impaired. The first 
day when, by chance, I put on a pair of eye- 
glasses I fomid that I had suddenly come nearer 
to everything. I felt I had gained the world 
twice as much as had been given to me the 
moment before. 

There is such a thing as coming to the nearer 
presence of the world through the soul It is 
like a real home-coming into this world. It is 
gaining the world more than can be measured — ■ 
like gaining an instrument, not merely by hav- 
ing it, but by producing upon it music. 



:4] 



SPIRITUAL life is the emancipation of 
consciousness. Through it we find im- 
mediate response of soul everywhere. Before 
we attain this life, we see men through the me- 
dium of self-interest, prejudice or classification, 
because of the perpetual remoteness around us 
which we cannot cross over. When the veil 
is removed, we not only see the fleeting forms 
of the world, but come close to its eternal be- 
ing, which is ineffable beauty. 

Some seek for the evidence of spiritual truth 
in the outside world. In this quest one may 
stumble upon ghosts or some super-sensual 
phenomenon of nature, but these do not lead 
us to spiritual truth, as new words in a diction- 
ary do not give us literature. 



[51 



TO-DAY is the special day of the yearly 
festival of our asram, and we must make 
time to realise in the heart of this place the 
truth which is beauty. And for this we have 
lighted our lamps. In the morning, the sun 
came out brightly; in the dusk the stars held 
up their lights. But these were not sufficient 
for us. Until we light our own little lamps, 
the world of lights in the sky is in vain, and un- 
less we make our own preparations, the great 
wealth of the world preparations remains wait- 
ing like a lute for the finger touch. 



6] 



I NEED have no anxiety about the world 
of nature. The sun does not wait to be 
trimmed by me. 

But from the early morning all my thoughts 
are occupied by this little world of my self. 
Its importance is owing to the fact that I have 
a world given to me which is mine. It is great 
because I have the power to make it worthy 
of its relationship with me; it is great, because 
by its help I can offer my own hospitality to 
the God of all the world. 



[71 



IN our everyday world we live in poverty; 
our resources have to be husbanded with 
care; our strength becomes exhausted, and we 
come to our God as beggars for our joy of life. 
On festival days, we display our wealth and say 
to Him that we are even as He is; and we are 
not afraid to spend. This is the day when we 
bring to Him our own gift of joy. For we truly 
meet God, when we come to Him with our 
offerings and not with our wants. 



:8] 



IIFE'S highest opportunity is to be able to 
J offer hospitality to our God. We Uve in 
God's world and forget Him, for the bhnd 
acceptance which is onesided never finds its 
truth. It is a desert which receives rain but 
never offers fruit in return and its receiving has 
no meaning. God's world is given to us and 
when we offer our world to God then the gift 
is realised. 



[9] 



WHEN I had thrust the great world un- 
noticed behind the bars of my office habit 
I developed in me the belief that I was indis- 
pensable. Of the many means by which Nature 
exacts work from man, this pride is one of the 
most efficient. Those who work for money, 
work only to the extent of their wages, up to a 
definite point, beyond which they would count it 
a loss to work. But those whose pride impels 
them to work, they have no rest; even over-time 
work is not felt as a loss by them. 

So busy used I to be under the behef that I 
was indispensable, that I hardly dared to wink. 
My doctor now and again would warn me, 
saying: "Stop, take it easy." But I would 
reply: "How will things go on if I stop?" Just 
then my health failed me, the wheels of my 
car broke down and it came to a stop beneath 
this window. From here I looked out upon the 
limitless space. There I saw whirUng the 
numberless flashing wheels of the triumphal 
chariot of time, — no dust raised, no din, not 
even a scratch left on the roadway. On a 
sudden I came to myself. I clearly perceived 
1101 



that things could get along without me. There 
was no sign that those wheels would stop, or 
drag the least bit, for lack of anyone in. par- 
ticular. 

But is this to be admitted so easily as all that! 
Even if I admit it in words, my mind refuses 
assent. If it be really quite the same whether I 
go or stay, how then did my pride of self find a 
place in the universe, even for a moment? On 
what could it have taken its stand? Amidst all 
the plentifulness with which space and time are 
teeming, it was nevertheless not possible to leave 
out this self of mine. The fact that I am in- 
dispensable is proved by the fact that / am. 



11] 



EGOISM is the price paid for the fact of 
existence. So long as I reaUse this price 
within me, so long do I steadfastly bear all 
the pains and penalties of keeping myself in 
existence. That is why the Buddhists have it, 
that to destroy egoism is to cut at the root of 
existence: for, without the pride of self it ceases 
to be worth while to exist. 

However that may be, this price has been 
furnished from some fund or other, — in other 
words, it matters somewhere that I should be, 
and the price paid is the measure of how much it 
matters. The whole universe — every molecule 
and atom of it — is assisting this desire that I 
should be. And it is the glory of this desire 
which is manifest in my pride of self. By virtue 
of this glory this infinitesimal "I" is not lower 
than any other thing in this Universe, in meas- 
ure or value. 



12 



MAN has viewed the desire in him to be in 
two different ways. Some have held it to 
be an impulse of Creative Power, some a joyous 
self-expression of Creative Love. And man sets 
before himself different goals as the object of his 
life according as he views the fact of his being as 
the revealment of Force or of Love. 

The value which our entity receives from 
Power is quite different in its aspect from that 
which it receives from Love. The direction in 
which we are impelled by our pride, in the field 
of power, is the opposite of that given by our 
pride, in the field of Love. 



[13] 



POWER can be measured. Its volume, its 
weight, its momentum can all be brought 
within the purview of mathematics. So it is the 
endeavour of those who hold power to be su- 
preme, to increase in bulk. They would re- 
peatedly multiply numbers, — the number of 
men, the number of coins, the number of ap- 
pliances. When they strive for success they 
sacrifice others' wealth, others' rights, others' 
lives; for sacrifice is the essence of the cult of 
Power; and the earth is running red with the 
blood of that sacrifice. 

The distinctive feature of materialism is the 
measurability of its outward expression, which 
is the same thing as the finiteness of its boun- 
daries. And the disputes, civil and criminal, 
which have raged in the history of man, have 
mostly been over these same boundaries. To 
increase one's own bounds one has necessarily to 
encroach upon those of others. So, because the 
pride of Power is the pride of quantity, the most 
powerful telescope, when pointed in the direc- 
tion of Power, fails to reveal the shore of peace 
across the sea of blood. 
fl41 



BUT when engaged in adding up the quanti- 
ties of these forces and facts of power, we 
do not find them to be an ever-increasing series. 
In our pursuit of the principle of accumulation 
we are all of a sudden held up by stumbling 
upon the principle of check which bars the way. 
We discover that there is not only onward 
motion, but there are also pauses. And we 
repeatedly find in history that whenever the 
blindness of Power has tried to overrule this 
rule of rhythm, it has committed suicide. And 
that is why man still remembers the story of the 
toppling over of the tower of Babylon. 

So we see that the principle of Power, of 
which the outward expression is bulk, is neither 
the final nor the supreme Truth. It has to stop 
itself to keep time with the rhythm of the uni- 
verse. Restraint is the gateway of the Good. 
The value of the Good is not measured in terms 
of dimension or multitude. He who has known 
it within himself feels no shame in rags and 
tatters. He rolls his crown in the dust and 
marches out on the open road. 

[15] 



WHEN from the principle of Power we ar- 
rive at the principle of Beauty, we at 
once understand that, all this while, we had 
been offering incense at the wrong shrine; that 
Power grows bloated on the blood of its victims 
only to perish of surfeit; that try as we may by 
adding to armies and armaments, by increasing 
the number and variety of naval craft, by heap- 
ing up our share of the loot of war, arithmetic 
will never serve to make true that which is 
untrue; that at the end we shall die crushed 
under the weight of our multiplication of 
things. 

When the Rishi, Yajnavalkya, on the eve of 
his departure, offered to leave his wife Maitreyi 
well-established upon an enumeration of what 
he had gathered together during his life, she 
exclaimed: 

What am I to do with these, which are not of the 
immortal spirit? 

Of what avail is it to add and add, and add ? 
By going on increasing the volume of pitch of 
sound we can get nothing but a shriek. We can 
[16] 



gain music only by restraining the sound and 
giving it the melody of the rhythm of perfection. 
Man grows gigantic by the appropriation of 
everything for himself: he attains harmony by 
giving himself up. In this harmony is peace, — 
never the outcome of external organization or of 
coalition between power and power, — the peace 
which rests on truth and consists in curbing of 
greed, in the forgiveness of sympathy. 



[17] 



THE question is: "In which Truth is my 
entity to realise its fullest value, — in 
Power or in Love? " If we accept Power as that 
truth we must also recognise conflict as inevit- 
able and eternal. According to many European 
writers the Rehgion of Peace and Love is but a 
precarious coat of armour within which the 
weak seek shelter, but for which the laws of 
nature have but scant respect. That which the 
timid preachers of reHgion anathematise as 
unrighteousness, — that alone is the sure road 
which leads man to success. 

The opposite school do not wholly deny this. 
They admit the premises but they say: 

Adharmenaidhate iabat, tato hhadrani pash- 
yati, tatah sapatndn jayati, — samulastu vin~ 
ashyati. 

In unrighteousness tJiey prosper, in it they 
find their good, through it they defeat their ene- 
mies, — hut they perish at the root. 



18] 



IT is still dark. The day is about to dawn. 
The stall-keepers, who gathered for the 
festival fair, have spent the winter night singing 
round the lighted fires. Now they are preparing 
to disperse. Their noise, unlike the birds' notes, 
disturbs the morning peace. 

For man stands at the parting of the ways. 
His strings have to be tuned for a deeper and a 
more complex music than those of nature. Man 
has his mind which reasons, and his will which 
seeks its own path. These have not yet found 
their full harmony with their surroundings. 
Therefore they are apt to break out in the 
ugliness of discord. 

But in this very ughness lies the great hope of 
the future. For these discords are not mere 
facts which we are compelled to acknowledge; 
they are ugly facts. This itself asserts every 
moment, that they are not what they should be; 
they are incomplete, and they are hopeful 
because they are painful. 



19 



WE are like a stray line of a poem, which 
ever feels that it rhymes with another line 
and must find it, or miss its own fulfilment. This 
quest of the unattained is the great impulse in 
man which brings forth all his best creations. 
Man seems deeply to be aware of a separation 
at the root of his being, he cries to be led across 
it to a union; and somehow he knows that it is 
love which can lead him to a love which is final. 



20] 



I HAVE a relationship with the world which 
is deeply personal. It is not of mere knowl- 
edge and use. All our relationships with facts 
have an infinite medium which is Law, Satyam; 
all our relationship with truth has an infinite 
medium whch is Reason, gnanam; all our 
personal relationship has an infinite medium, 
which is Love, anandam. 

We are not mere facts in this world, like 
pieces of stones; we are persons. And therefore 
we cannot be content with drifting along the 
stream of circumstances. We have a central 
ideal of love with which to harmonise our exis- 
tence, we have to manifest a truth in our life, 
which is the perfect relationship with the 
Eternal Person. 



[21] 



I AST night when the north wind was keen, 
J like a sharp blade of steel, the stall-keepers 
improvised some kind of shelter with twigs and 
leaves. With all its flimsiness it was the most 
important necessity for them, for the time. 
But this morning, before it is light, we hear them 
shouting for their bullocks and dragging out 
from underneath the trees their creaking carts. 
It is urgently important for them now to leave 
their shelter. 

''I want" has its constant counterweight — ^'I 
do not want." Otherwise the monster necessity, 
with its immovable weight, would crush all 
existence. For the moment we may sigh at the 
fact that nothing remains for long, but we are 
saved from permanent despair at the calamity 
that nothing moves at all. Things remain and 
things move — between these two contrary 
currents we have found our dwelling-place 
and freedom. 



[22] 



THE horse harnessed to a carriage is only a 
part of it; the master is he who drives it 
unattached. We are enjoined to work with 
vigour and yet retain our detachment of mind. 
For our deeds must express our freedom above 
all, otherwise we become like wheels revolving 
because compelled. There is a harmony be- 
tween doing and not doing, between gaining and 
renouncing which we must attain. 

Our daily flow of prayer carries our seK into 
the supreme Self, it makes us feel the reality of 
that fulness which we gain by utterly giving 
ourselves up, makes our consciousness expand in 
a large world of peace, where movements are 
beauty and all relations are truths because of 
their inner freedom, which is disinterestedness. 



[23] 



OUR will attains its perfection when it is 
one with love, for only love is true freedom. 
This freedom is not in the negation of restraint. 
It spontaneously accepts bondage, because 
bondage does not bind it, but only measures its 
truth. Non-slavery is in the cessation of service, 
but freedom is in service itself. 

A village poet of Bengal says: 

''In love the end is neither pain nor pleasure, 

but love only. 
Love gives freedom while it binds, for love is 

what unites." 



[24] 



10VE is not a mere impulse, it must contain 
J truth, which is law. It accepts limitations 
from truth because of its own inner wealth. The 
child willingly exercises restraint to correct its 
bodily balance, because it has true pleasure in 
the freedom of its movements; and love also 
counts no cost as too great to reahse its truth. 
Poetry is much more strict in its form of expres- 
sion than prose, because poetry has the freedom 
of joy in its origin and end. Our love of God is 
accurately careful of its responsibilities. It is 
austere in its probity and it must have intellect 
for its ally. Since what it deals with is immense 
in value, it has to be cautious about the purity of 
its coins. Therefore, when our soul cries for the 
gift of immortality, its first prayer is, — ''Lead 
me from the unreal to Truth." 



[25] 



THE Father is working in his world, but the 
Beloved is lying asleep in our heart, in the 
depth of its darkness. He will wake only when 
our own love wakes. It may sound paradoxical 
to say that we are unconscious of our own love, 
as we are unconscious of the fact that the earth 
is carrying us round the sun. But the truth is 
that all parts of our nature are not fully illumi- 
nated, and in most cases we have the immediate 
knowledge of ourselves only on the surface 
where our mind is occupied with the temporary 
needs and ferments of our life. 



26 



To wake up in love is not to wake up in a 
world of sweetness, but in the world of 
heroic endeavours where life wins its eternity 
through death, and joy its worth in suffering. 
As the most positive affirmation of truth is in 
love, it must realise itself through all that 
threatetis us with deprivation. Poverty is 
afraid of the smallest loss, and wealth is daring 
in its expenditure. Love is the wealth of soul 
and therefore it reveals itself in utmost bravery 
and fortitude. And because it finds its resource 
in itself it begs not praise from men and no 
punishment can reach it from outside. 



[27] 



THE world of things in which we Uve misses 
its equilibrium when its communication 
with the world of love is lost. Then we have to 
pay with our soul for objects which are im- 
mensely cheap. And this can only happen when 
the prison walls of things threaten us with being 
final in themselves. Then it gives rise to 
terrible fights, jealousies and coercions, to a 
scramble for space and opportunities, for these 
are limited. We become painfully aware of the 
evil of this and try all measure of adjustment 
within the narrow bounds of a mutilated truth. 
This leads to failures. Only he helps us who 
proves by his life that we have a soul whose 
dwelling is in the kingdom of love, and things 
lose the tyranny of fictitious price when we come 
to our spiritual freedom. 



[28] 



IT is hard for us to free ourselves from the 
grip of our acquisitions. For the pull of 
their gravitation is towards the centre of our self. 
The force of perfect love acts towards the 
contrary direction. And this is why love gives 
us freedom from the weight of things. There- 
fore our days of joy are our days of expenditure. 
It is not the lightness of pressm*e in the outside 
world which we need in order to be free, but love 
which has the power to bear the world's weight, 
not only with ease, but with joy. 



[29] 



ONLY because we have closed our path to 
the inner world of freedom, has the outer 
world become terrible in its exactions. It is 
slavery to continue to live in a sphere where 
things are, yet their meaning is obstructed. It 
has become possible for men to say that exist- 
ence is evil only because, in our blindness, we 
have missed something in which our existence 
has its truth. If a bird tries to soar in the sky 
with only one of its wings, it is offended with the 
wind for buffeting it down to the dust. All 
broken truths are evil. They hurt, because they 
suggest something which they do not offer. 
Death does not hurt us, but disease does, 
because disease constantly reminds us of health 
and yet withholds it from us. And life in a half 
world is evil, because it feigns finality when it is 
obviously incomplete, giving us the cup but 
not the draught of life. 



[30] 



COMING to the theatre of life we fooHshly 
sit with our back to the stage. We see the 
gilded pillars and decorations, we watch the 
coming and going of the crowd; and when the 
light is put out at the end, we ask ourselves in 
bewilderment, what is the meaning of it all? 
If we paid attention to the inner stage, we could 
witness the eternal love drama of the soul and 
be assured that it has pauses, but no end, and 
that the gorgeous world-preparations are not a 
magnificent delirium of things. 



[31] 



WE criticise Nature from outside when we 
separate it in our mind from human na- 
ture, and blame it for being devoid of pity and 
justice. Let the wick burn with indignation at 
the want of Hght in the rest of the candle, but the 
truth is that the wick represents the whole can- 
dle in its illumination. Obstacles are necessary 
companions to expression, and we know that the 
positive element in language is not in its ob- 
structiveness. Exclusively viewed from the side 
of the obstacle, Nature appears as inimical to the 
idea of morality. But if that were absolutely 
true, moral life could never come to exist. Life, 
moral or physical, is not a completed fact, but 
is a continual process, depending for its move- 
ment upon two contrary forces, the force of 
resistance and that of expression. Dividing 
these forces into two mutually opposing prin- 
ciples does not help us, for the truth dwells not 
in the opposition but in its continual reconcilia- 
tion. 



32 



GOOD taste which is needful for the true 
understanding of a poem, comes from the 
vision of unity seen in the Hght of imagination. 
Faith has the similar function in our acceptance 
of life. It is a spiritual organ of sight which 
enables us instinctively to realise the vision of 
wholeness when in fact we only see the parts. 
Sceptics may scoff at this vision as an hallucina- 
tion, they may select and arrange facts in such a 
manner as to disprove it and yet faith never 
doubts its own direct apprehension of the inner 
truth which binds, which builds, which heals, 
which leads to an ideal of fullness. Faith is this 
spontaneous response in our being to the voice 
of the all-pervading Yes, and therefore it is the 
greatest of all creative forces in human life. It 
is not merely a passive acknowledgment of 
truth, it is an ever active effort for attaining 
harmony with that peace which is in the rhythm 
of truth in creation, goodness which is in the 
rhythm of combination in society, and unity of 
love which is in the rhythm of self-realisation 
in soul. The mere fact of innumerable breaks 
in such a rhythm no more proves its unreality 

[331 



to a man gifted with faith than the prevalent 
fact of harsh notes and noises disproves the truth 
of music to a musician. It only calls him to a 
strenuous endeavour to mend the break and 
establish harmony with truth. 



[34] 



THE day breaks in the east, like a bud 
bursting its sheath to come out in flower. 
But if this fact belonged only to the outside 
world of events, however could we find our 
entrance into it? It is a sunrise in the sky of 
our consciousness, it is a new creation, fresh in 
bloom, in our life. 

Open your eyes and see. Feel this world as a 
living flute might feel the breath of music 
passing through it, feel the meeting of creative 
joy in the depth of your consciousness. Meet 
this morning light in the majesty of your exist- 
ence, where it is one with you. But if you sit 
with your face turned away, you build a sepa- 
rating barrier in the undivided sphere of crea- 
tion, where events and the creative conscious- 
ness meet. 



[35] 



DARKNESS is that which isolates our 
consciousness within our own self. It hides 
the great truth of our unity with the world, 
giving rise to doubt and contention. Groping in 
the dark, we stumble against objects to which 
we cling, believing them to be the only things 
we have. When light comes we slacken our 
hold, finding them to be mere parts of the all to 
which we are related. This is freedom — freedom 
from the isolation of self, from the isolation of 
things which impart fierce intensity to our sense 
of possession. Our God is that freedom, for He 
is Light, and in that light we find out truth, 
which is our perfect relationship with all. 



[36] 



FEAR assumes unlimited dimensions in the 
dark, because it is the shadow of the self 
which has lost its foothold in the all; the self 
which is a doubter, an unbeliever, which puts its 
emphasis upon negation, exaggerating detached 
facts into fearful distortions. In the light we 
find the harmony of things and know that our 
world is great and therefore we are great; we 
know that, with more and more extensive 
realisation of truth, conflicts will vanish, for 
existence itself is harmony. 



[37] 



IN Nature we find the presence of law in 
truth, and the presence of joy in beauty. 
It is urgently necessary for us to know truth, 
but we are free to ignore the presence of joy. 
It is not safe for our life to forget that it becomes 
Ught in the morning; but we can safely forget 
that morning is beautiful, and yet live. 

In this realm of truth we are bound, in the 
realm of beauty we are free. We must pay our 
homage to God where He rules; but we may 
laugh at Him where He loves. He keeps us 
bound where He binds Himself, He gives us 
freedom where He is infinite. The great power 
of beauty is in its modesty. It makes way for 
the least of us, it waits in silence. It must have 
our all or nothing, therefore it never asks. It 
suffers meekly when it is refused, but it has 
its eternity. 



[38] 



AN acquaintance of mine has suddenly died 
-ZjL and once again I come to know death, the 
tritest of all truisms in this world. 

The moralist teaches us to know the world as 
unreal through the contemplation of death. 
But to make renunciation easy by calling the 
world names is neither true, nor brave. For 
that renunciation is no renunciation at all in 
which things have lost their value. 

On the contrary, the world is so true, that 
death's wheel leaves no mark upon it. The 
untruth is in the belief that this self of ours for 
its own permanent use can rob this world of 
even a particle of its things. Death has its 
concern only with our self and not with this 
world. The world never loses an atom, it is 
our self which suffers. 



[391 



THERE are men whose idea of life is static, 
who long for its continuation after death 
only bec^;Use of their wish for permanence and 
not perfection; they love to imagine that the 
things to which they are accustomed will persist 
for ever. They completely identify themselves 
in their noinds with their fixed surroundings and 
with whatever they have gathered, and to have 
to leave these is death for them. They forget 
that the true meaning of living is outliving, it is 
ever growing out of itself. The fruit clings to 
its stem, its skin clings to the pulp and the pulp 
to the seed so long as the fruit is immature, so 
long as it is not ready for its course of further 
Hfe. Its outer covering and its inner core are 
not yet differentiated and it only proves its hfe 
by its strength of tenacity. But when the seed 
is ripe its hold upon its surrounding is loosened, 
its pulp attains fragrance, sweetness and detach- 
ment, and is dedicated to all who need it. Birds 
peck at it and it is not hm't, the storm plucks it 
and flings it to the dust and it is not destroyed. 
It proves its immortality by its renunciation. 

[40] 



IN Hindu scriptures this world is considered 
to be an egg. If that be true, then this egg 
must have for its content a Hving being whose 
fulfilhnent is to break through its shell into a 
freer existence. 

While our world feeds us, gives us shelter, it 
encloses us all around. The limitedness of our 
narrow sensibility and range of thought build 
the shell of our world egg, within which our 
consciousness is confined. If we could widen 
its boundaries even by a small fraction, if some 
of the invisible rays could come within our 
sphere of perception, if few more of the dance 
rhythms of creation could find response in some 
added strings of our senses, then the whole 
aspect of our world would be completely 
changed. 

To come out of the bounds of our sensibility 
and mental vision into a wider freedom is the 
meaning of our immortaUty. Can we imagine 
in our present stage of confinement what that 
sphere of freedom is like? From the data of all 
the facts within the shell can a chick ever form 
the idea of the world to which it is to be born? 

[411 



THE passivity which is the predominant 
fact of the shell life is secretly contra- 
dicted by the rudimentary wings. Likewise 
in the confinement of our present state, in 
spite of the fact that a great part of our life 
is passively obedient to circumstances, there 
struggles in us our aspiration for freedom 
against impediments that appear to be ultimate. 
This is our spiritual pair of wings which have 
their significance in a full opportunity to soar. 
Had immortality only meant an endless per- 
sistence of our shell itself then we should admit 
that these impotent wings were cursed by an 
evil power with an eternity of hindrance. But 
this we cannot admit. Man has ever talked of 
emancipation from what is present, from what 
seems final. While the spirit of life in him seeks 
continuance the spirit of immortality seeks 
emancipation. 



[42] 



THE life of the seed within the fruit is 
absolutely different from its life of growth 
as a tree. The life which is bound on all sides 
within the environment of our self, within the 
limited range of our senses must be so funda- 
mentally different from the life of an emanci- 
pated soul that it is impossible to imagine the 
latter while we are immured in the sheath of self. 
And therefore in our desire for eternal life we 
pray for an eternity of our habit and comfort, 
forgetting that immortality is in repeatedly 
transcending the definite forms of life in order to 
pursue the infinite truth of life. Those who 
think that life's true meaning is in the persistence 
of its particular forms which are famiUar to us 
are like misers who have not the power to know 
that the meaning of money can only be found by 
spending it, by changing the symbol into truth. 



[43 



A LL our desires are but focussing our will to 
JTjL a limited range of experience. These 
become jealously tenacious and combative when 
we fail to imagine that our experience will 
widen. In our childhood we wished for an 
unbounded continuity in our enjojnnent of a 
particular food or game and we refused to 
believe in the worth of a mature age which had 
different interests altogether. Those who build 
their vision of a life after death upon the founda- 
tion of desires belonging to the present life 
merely show their want of faith in Eternal life. 
They cling to what they have because they 
cannot believe that their love for the present is 
only an indication that this love will persist 
through their growth, stimulating it, and not 
that it will retard their growth altogether. 



[44] 



THE world of sleep is fundamental, — it is 
the world of the mother's womb. It is the 
world where the grass and the trees live and find 
their beauty of reposefulness. Our conscious- 
ness has freed itself from its embrace, asserting 
its mdependence. It is the freedom of the 
fountain which must come over and over again 
to its origin to renew its play. The whole depth 
and spread of the still water finds its own play 
in the play of this little fountain. In like man- 
ner, it is in our own consciousness that the 
universe knows itself. Therefore this conscious- 
ness has to be great in order to be true. Our 
consciousness is the music of the world, its 
dance, its poem. It has its pauses in the bosom 
of the original sleep, to be fed with immortality 
at her breast. 



[45] 



IN man's nature there is a division between 
the fleeting and the permanent, which the 
animals have not, because they hve on the sur- 
face of hfe. Therefore they are saved from the 
danger of trying to give permanence to things 
which have not that quality in themselves. 
Only because man has to a great extent a 
preservative power in his inner world, does he 
try in his greed to keep his appetites ever fresh, 
steeping them in the elixir of imagination. 
These appetites are of outer nature, and for the 
animals they quit the stage when they have 
played their parts. But when we try to hoard 
them in our inner life we wrongly put upon 
them the seal of the infinite. Thus our land of 
immortality is every day being invaded by the 
retinue of death, and the servants who ought to 
be dismissed with their wages paid, are en- 
shrined in our sanctuary. 



[46; 



WEALTH is the symbol of power. There- 
fore, wealth must move and flow in order 
to be perfect. For power is active, it is move- 
ment. But mere movement is superficial. It 
must be a growth and therefore continual gain- 
ing. This gain is something which not merely 
moves, but remains. 

The highest harmony of movement and rest is 
in the spiritual life, whose essence is love. Love 
of God, nay, love in all forms, is the reaching of 
the goal and yet never coming to a stop. Power, 
when it reaches its end, stops and grows careful 
of its hoarding. Love, when it reaches its end, 
reaches endlessness and therefore is not afraid 
of spending its all. 



[47; 



BEING by nature social, some portion of our 
energies we must employ to keep up the 
flow of sociality. But its field and action are on 
the surface. The ripples of gregariousness are 
not the deep currents of human love. The men 
who have strong social instincts are not neces- 
sarily lovers of men. 

The men who are spendthrifts very often lack 
true generosity. In most cases they cannot 
give, but can only spend. And also like them 
the social men can spend themselves, but not 
give themselves. This reckless spending creates 
a vacuum which we fill up with the debris of 
activities, whose object is to bury time. 



[48] 



BUT we cannot afford to fritter away our 
solitude where lies the throne of the infinite. 
We cannot truly live for one another, if we never 
claim the freedom to live alone, if our social 
duties consist in helping one another to forget 
that we have souls. To exhaust ourselves com- 
pletely in mere efforts to give company to each 
other, is to cheat the world of our best, the best 
which is the product of the amplitude of our 
inner atmosphere of leisure. Society poisons 
the air it breathes, where it hems in the indivi- 
dual with a revolving crowd of distractions. 



[49] 



IN our country it is accounted the greatest 
calamity to have one's courtyard brought 
under the plough. Because, in the courtyard, 
man has made his very own the immense wealth 
called space. Space is not a rare commodity 
outside, but one does not get it till he can bring it 
inside and make it his own. The space of the 
courtyard, man has made part of his home. 
Here the light of the sun is revealed as his own 
light, and here his baby claps his little hands to 
call to the moon. So if the courtyard be not 
kept open, but be used for sowing crops, then is 
the nest destroyed in which the outside Universe 
can come and dwell as man's own universe. 



[50] 



THE difference between a really rich man 
and a poor man is, that the former can 
afford vast open spaces in his home. The furni- 
ture with which a rich man encumbers his house 
may be valuable, but the space with which he 
makes his courtyard wide, his garden extensive, 
is of infinitely greater value. The business place 
of the merchant is crowded with his stock, — 
there he has not the means of keeping spaces va- 
cant, there he is miserly, and millionaire though 
he be, there he is poor. But in his home that 
same merchant flouts mere utility by the length 
and breadth and height of his room — 'to say 
nothing of the expanse of his garden — and gives 
to space the place of honour. It is here that the 
merchant is rich. 

Not only unoccupied space, but unoccupied 
time, also, is of the highest value. The rich man 
out of his abundance, can purchase leisure. 
It is in fact a test of his riches, this power to 
keep fallow wide stretches of time, which want 
cannot compel him to plough up. 

There is yet another place where an open 
expanse is the most valuable of all, — and that is 

[51] 



in the mind. Thoughts which must be thought, 
from which there is no escape, are but worries. 
The thoughts of the poor and the miserable 
cHng to their minds as the ivy to a ruined 
temple. 

Pain closes up all openings of the mind. 
Health may be defined as the state in which the 
physical consciousness lies fallow, like an open 
heath. Let there be but a touch of gout in the 
remotest toe and the whole of consciousness is 
filled with pain, leaving not a corner empty. 

Just as one cannot live grandly without 
unoccupied spaces, so the mind cannot think 
grandly without unoccupied leisure, — otherwise 
for it truth becomes petty. And Hke dim light, 
petty truth distorts vision, encourages fear, and 
keeps narrow the field of communion between 
man and man. 



52] 



IN society, we find our places according to a 
certain conventional price set upon us, like 
toys arranged in the shop windows, according to 
their value. This makes us forget that we are 
not for sale, that the social man is not the whole 
man. 

I have known a fisherman singing, while 
fishing all day in the Ganges, who was pointed 
out to me by my boatman with awe as a man 
possessed by God. He is out of reach of ths 
fluctuation of market prices, for he has found 
out the infinite value of the soul which the 
monarchs of the world have not. In history 
there were men who are still recognized by 
their eternal worth; but this recognition is not 
the only proof of their value. For immortality 
is not in its outer manifestation, and dark rays 
are rays all the same, though we do not see 
them. The figure of this fisherman comes to my 
mind when I think that their number is not 
small who with their lives sing the epic of the 
freedom of soul, but will never be known in 
history. 

[53] 



OUR aspiration becomes easy when through 
us our community aspires. Money-making 
is pursued by most men, not merely because 
money is useful, but rather because it is desired 
by others. The savages' lust for head-hunting 
becomes irresistible when it is prevalent in the 
community. When the majority wishes through 
us, we are ready to sacrifice truth to its claims. 

Doubts assail us and strength fails in our 
aspiration for spiritual life chiefly because it is 
not the aspiration of the surrounding crowd. 
Therefore our wish for the highest has to be 
so immensely true, so that it can sustain itself in 
all circumstances against the constant pressure 
of the crowd's wish. We need all the succour 
of the eternal to fight against the combined an- 
tagonism of the congregated moments. 



54] 



OUR thoughts naturally move in their 
surrounding element of man's mind; like 
birds in the air. This sky of mind is perpetually 
troubled by contrary wind-currents, by doubts 
and denials, by levity and pride; it is obscured 
by the dust and smoke of the busy world. Our 
spiritual wings require spontaneity of speed, 
grace of perfect movement; but when they are 
constantly buffeted by noisy gusts from all sides 
it makes us too conscious of our limitations, and 
consequently that self-abandonment becomes 
difficult which is necessary for our communion 
with the Infinite. And yet the task has to be 
done and the most difficult path taken for the 
highest attainment of life. The great teachers 
have ever won that infinity of sohtude needed 
for soul's meeting with her God, through the 
crowd and for the crowd themselves. In the 
fives of these men we witness the proof of our 
own limitless power, and the faith that we thus 
gain gives freedom to our aspiration in the face 
of adversity. 

[55] 



SOME part of the earth's water becomes 
rarefied and ascends to the skies. With 
the movement and the music it acquires in those 
pure heights it then showers down, back to the 
water of the earth, making it wholesome and 
fresh. Similarly, part of the mind of humanity 
-\J rises up out of the world and flies skywards; 
but this sky-soaring mind attains complete- 
ness only when it has returned, to mingle with 
the earth-bound mind. This is the ventilation 
of religion, the circulation of man's ideals 
between heaven and earth. 



[56] 



THERE are the rain of mud, the rain of 
blood, and such Uke dire phenomena of 
which we hear tell. These happen when the 
purity of the atmosphere is sullied and the air is 
burdened with dirt. Then it is not the song of 
the sky which descends in purifying showers, 
but just the earth's own sins which fall back 
on it. Then our rehgion itself grows muddy, 
the collective egoism of the people assumes 
pious names, and we boast of our God taking 
the lead in our adventures of self-seeking, in our 
campaign of hatred. 



[57] 



TO-DAY on the sin-laden dust of the earth 
pours tainted rain from the sky. Our 
long wait for the cleansing bath in pure water 
from on high has been repeatedly doomed to 
disappointment; the mud is soiling our minds 
and marks of blood are also showing. How long 
can we keep on wiping this away? Even the 
pure silence of the empyrean is powerless to 
clarify the discordant notes of the prayer for 
peace which is rising from a blood-stained world. 
Peace? Who can truly pray for Peace? Only 
they who are ready to renounce. 

Atha dheera amrtatvam viditva 
Druvam adhruveshviha na prarthayante. 

Men of tranquil mind, being sure of Immortal 
Truth, never seek the eternal in things of the 
moment. 



58 



OUR greatest men have shown immense 
respect for mankind in their expectations. 
We come to believe in ourselves because of 
what is asked of us. Practical men base their 
arrangements upon their estimates of man's 
limitations. Therefore the great creations of 
history, the creations that have their foundation 
upon the faith in the infinite in man, have not 
their origin in the common-sense of practical 
men. When Buddha said to men: ''Spread thy 
thoughts of love beyond limits," when Christ 
said: "Love thine enemies," their words tran- 
scended the average standard of ideals belonging 
to the ordinary world. But they ever remind us 
that our true life is not the life of the ordinary 
world, and we have a fund of resources in us 
which is inexhaustible. It is not for us to 
despair, because the highest hope for mankind 
has been uttered by the great words of great 
men. 



[59] 



IT is an important duty for man so to bear 
himself that he may not fail to be recog- 
nized as man, — not only in his own interest, but 
because of his responsibilities to others. The 
man who belittles himself lowers not only his 
own value but that of all mankind. Man knows 
himself as great where he sees great men, — and 
the truer is such vision of greatness, the easier it 
becomes to be great. 



[60] 



To fledgeling birds flight in the sky may ap- 
pear incredible. They may with apparent 
reason measure the highest limit of their possi- 
bilities by the limited standard of their nests. 
But, in the meanwhile, they find that their food 
is not grown inside those nests, it is brought to 
them across the measureless blue. There is a 
silent voice that speaks to them, that they are 
more than what they are, and that they must 
not laugh at the message of soaring wings and 
glad songs of freedom. 



[611 



THE more we feel afraid of pain, the more we 
build all kinds of hiding places in which to 
hide ourselves from our own truth. Our wealth 
and honour are barricades that keep us at arm's 
length from the touch of our own true selves. 
Thus we become more familiar with that which 
we have, than that which we are. Our suffer- 
ings seek us out through om* protections; they 
take away our artificial props and set us face 
to face with our naked loneliness. 

This stripping bare of our deeper selves is not 
only necessary for self-exploration and the 
discovery of our innermost resources, but it is 
also needed for our purification. For beneath 
our safe cover of prosperity and comfort, dirt 
and dead matter gather every day waiting to be 
cleared by the rude rubbing of pain. 



[621: 



THE old is prudent but is not wise. Wisdom 
is that freshness of mind which enables one 
to realise that truth is not hoarded in caskets of 
maxims, it is free and living. Great sufferings 
lead us to wisdom because these are the birth- 
throes through which our mind is freed from 
its habit-environment, and comes naked into 
the arms of reality. Wisdom has the character 
of the child perfected through knowledge and 
feeling. 



[631 



MORNING has its birds' songs, and life's 
daybreak has the music of the child. At 
every home comes to us this refrain of life with 
its pure notes of beauty. The bloom constantly 
is brushed off the world of man by the friction 
of its dirt, it is roughened and begrimed by the 
callous touch of age; yet there flows unob- 
structed the daily renewal of humanity in its 
ceaseless rebirths. The eternal repeats its caU 
at man's gate in every child, and the morning's 
message keeps its melody unimpaired. 

It rouses response to-day in my heart, the 
life's awakening call that comes from the chil- 
dren's shouts and songs round me, and I feel 
that creation finds its own true voice in them, 
the creation which keeps nestled in its heart the 
spirit of the child. 



[64] 



THIS symphony made of the morning light 
and children's mirth does not speak to me 
of pure joy. For in my heart it mingles with 
another strain which tempers its sparkle with a 
shade of sadness. It is a cry of unattained 
harmony, unfulfilled hope. The simple notes 
of ideal completeness, dash themselves against 
life's complexities, rugged with flaws and frac- 
tures, and a sob of anguish spreads over our 
thoughts. For pain finds its own music in the 
notes that joy brings to it from heaven, as the 
pebbles find theirs from the flow of the laughing 
stream. 



[65] 



EXISTENCE is the play of the fountain of 
immortahty. Wash your soul with its 
water, you who are old, and feel that you are 
of the same age with the flower that has blos- 
somed this morning and with this light which 
carries fresh in its countenance the first smile 
of creation. This is freedom, freedom from 
the mist which for the time being masks our 
spirit with the semblance of blurred age, hid- 
ing from us the truth that we are the chil- 
dren of the immortal. Gould the child bring 
such a joy to the heart of man if age and death 
were true? Does not that joy come from a 
direct recognition of the truth of deathless life, 
of endless growth and ever-renewed hope of 
perfection? 



[66] 



To alleviate pain, to try to remove its causes, 
are worthy of man. All the same, we must 
know that a great part of our sufferings has to be 
ascribed to the beginning of our entrance into a 
new plane of existence to which our vital nature 
has not been completely adapted nor our mind 
thoroughly accustomed. From a narrow perfec- 
tion of animality man has arrived in the imper- 
fectness of spiritual life, where the civil war 
between the forces of our primitive past and 
those belonging to our future has robbd us 
of peace. Not having reached its normal stage 
humanity is enveloped in the incandescent 
vapour of suffering. 



[67] 



MAN'S greatness is like the morning sun, 
its horizon is far before us. Man truly 
lives in the life that is beyond him; he toils for 
the unknown master, he stores for the unborn, he 
leaves the best harvest of his life for reapers who 
have not yet come; the time which is yet to be is 
truer to him than the time which is. Man 
offers himself as a sacrifice for all that lies in 
future; the motive power which guides the 
course of his growth is expectation. All this 
shows that man is not yet born, his history is the 
history of birth-throes. Our greatest men bring 
in their life the message of man's future birth; 
for they dwell in the time to come, making it 
ready for ourselves. They reveal to us a life 
whose glory is not in the absence of suffering, 
but in the fact that its sufferings have been made 
creative, transmuted into the stuff of life itself. 
It is like the tree which garners the sun's heat 
and light in its fibre and breaks out in beauty of 
fruitfulness. By extinguishing the fire of pain 
man may find his comfort, his period of slumber, 
which is the period of stagnant time, an im- 
prisoned present; but by mastering this fire he 
lights his lamp of wisdom which gives illumina- 
tion to the endless future. 
[681 



THERE are sufferings about which the 
question comes to our mind whether we 
deserve them. We must frankly acknowledge 
that explanations are not offered to us. So 
it does not help us in the least to complain, let 
us rather be worthy of the challenge thrown to 
us by them. That we have been wounded is a 
fact which can be ignored, but that we have been 
brave is a truth of the highest importance. For 
the former belongs to the outer world of cause 
and effect, while the latter belongs to the 
world of spirit. 



69] 



WE must know that to be provided with an 
exact apportionment of what we deserve 
and need, is like traveUing in a world whose 
flatness is ideally perfect, and therefore where 
the fluid forces of nature are held in suspense. 
We require ups and downs, however unpleasant 
they may be, in our. life's geography, in order to 
make our thoughts and energies fluently active. 
Our life's journey is a journey in an unknown 
country, where hills and hollows come in our 
way unawares, keeping our minds ever active in 
dealing with them. They do not come accord- 
ing to our deserts, but our deserts are judged 
according to our treatment of them. 



70] 



WHEN the ship's hold is full of water then 
only does the buffeting of the outside 
waters become a menace. The inside water is 
not so visibly threatening, its tumult not so stu- 
pendously apparent, — it destroys with its dead 
weight. So the temptation is strong to cast all 
the blame on the waves outside. But if good 
sense does not dawn in time, of all hands man- 
ning the pumps, then sinking is inevitable. 
However hopeless the task of getting rid of the 
internal water may now and then appear, 
it is surely more hopeful than trying to bale 
away the water of the outside seas! 

Obstacles and opposition from without there 
always will be, but they become dangers only 
when there are also obstacles and opposition 
within. 



[71] 



WHEN we come to believe that we are in 
possession of our God because we belong 
to some particular sect it gives us such a com- 
plete sense of comfort, that God is needed no 
longer except for quarrelling with others whose 
idea of God differs from ours in theoretical 
details. 

Having been able to make provision for our 
God in some shadow-land of creed we feel free to 
reserve all the space for ourselves in the world of 
reality, ridding it of the wonder of the infinite, 
making it as trivial as our own household 
furniture. Such unlimited vulgarity only be- 
comes possible when we have no doubt in our 
minds that we believe in God while our life 
ignores Him. 



[72] 



THE pious man of sect is proud because he is 
confident of his right of possession in God. 
The man of devotion is meek because he is 
conscious of God's right of love over his hfe and 
soul. The object of our possession becomes 
smaller than ourselves, and without acknowledg- 
ing it in so many words the bigoted sectarian 
has an implicit belief that God can be kept 
secured for certain individuals in a cage which is 
of their own make. In a similar manner the 
primitive races of men believe that their cere- 
monials have a magic influence upon their 
deities. Sectarianism is a perverse form of 
worldliness in the disguise of rehgion; it breeds 
a narrowness of heart in a greater measure than 
the cult of the world based upon material 
interest can ever do. For undisguised pursuit of 
self has its safety in its openness, like filth 
exposed to the sun and air. But the self-magni- 
fication with its consequent lessening of God 
that goes on unchecked under the cover of 
sectarianism loses its chance of salvation be- 
cause it defiles the very source of purity. 

[73] 



RELIGION, like poetry, is not a mere idea, 
it is expression. The self-expression of 
God is in the endless variedness of creation; and 
our attitude towards the Infinite Being must 
also in its expression have a variedness of indi- 
viduality ceaseless and unending. Those sects 
which jealously build their boundaries with too 
rigid creeds excluding all spontaneous move- 
ment of the living spirit may keep hoarded their 
theology but they kill reUgion. 



74] 



THE attempt to make the one religion which 
is their own prevail for all time and space, 
comes naturally to men addicted to sectarian- 
ism. This makes it offensive to them to be told 
that God is generous in his distribution of love, 
and his means of communication with men have 
not been restricted to a blind lane abruptly 
stopping at one historical point of time and 
place. If humanity ever happens to be over- 
whelmed with a catastrophe of a universal flood 
of one religion then God will have to make 
provision for another Noah's Ark to save his 
creatures from a spiritual destruction. 



[751 



WHEN religion is in the complete possession 
of the sect and is made smooth to the 
level of the monotonous average, it becomes cor- 
rect and comfortable, but loses the living spirit 
of art. For art is the expression of the universal 
through the individual, and religion in its outer 
aspect is the art of the human soul. It almost 
becomes a matter of pride and a sign of superior 
culture to be able to outrage all codes of decency 
imposed by an authorised religion bearing the 
stamp of approval of an organisation which can 
persecute but has not the power to persuade. 

As an analogous phenomenon, we have known 
literary men deliberately cultivating a dread of 
whatever has the reputation of goodness, and 
also men of art afraid of being suspected as a 
lover of the beautiful. They rebel against the 
fact that what is proper and what is true in 
beauty and in goodness have become mixed up 
in men's mind. The appraisement of what is 
proper does not require any degree of culture or 
natural sensitiveness of mind, and therefore it 
fetches a ready price in the market, outbids 
truth, becomes petty in its tyranny and leaves 
[76] 



smudges of vulgarity upon things that are 
precious. To rescue truth from the dungeon of 
propriety has ever been the mission, of poets 
and artists, but in the time of revolution they 
are apt to go further by rejecting truth itself. 

In our epic Ramayana we find that when 
Prince Ramachandra won back his wife from the 
clutches of the giant who had abducted her, his 
people clamoured for her rejection, suspecting 
defilement. Similarly in art fastidious men of 
culture are clamouring for the banishment of 
the beautiful because she has been allowed to 
remain so long in the possession of propriety. 



[77] 



THOSE who have their enterprises in the 
world of nature, master her forces, becom- 
ing rich in wealth and power. The greatest 
gain which comes across their path in their 
adventures is moral truth. For power is combi- 
nation, and all combinations, in order to be 
perfect, need the help of the moral law, in which 
individuals acknowledge the universal principle 
of the good. Moral truth is most needed when 
men move, and move together. 

But laws, whether in nature where it is 
physical, or in society where it is moral, are 
external. They are formal, lacking that deeper 
mystery of perfectness, which is creation; which 
is in the beauty of harmony in nature; which is 
in the beauty of love in man. Law is the 
channel of finitude through which things evolve 
without ceasing, but its meaning hes in its 
revolution round an inner centre which is 
infinite. We follow law to live; we reach the 
centre to find immortality. 



781 



FOLLOWING the interminable current of 
law, exploring the countless fields of forces 
and openings of wealth, we talk of endless 
endeavour but of no ultimate gain. We know 
that power thrives in moving. When it stumble 
against some final object it receives its death 
fall. We of all peoples in the world know to our 
cost that when nations grow weary of their 
quest, settling down to store up and to arrange 
their possessions; when with their distrust of 
new ideas their morals stiffen into conventions, 
becoming unfit to guide them in the path of life's 
adventures, keeping them bound to growthless 
traditions, then they are gradually pushed away 
from life's high road by the moving forces of 
history. 

But this endlessness of movement in the outer 
world only proves that there we have no goal to 
reach and our goal is somewhere else. It is in 
the inner region of spirit. There our deepest 
longing is for that peace which rests upon 
fulfilment. There we meet our God. He is the 
ever-moving power in the world. He is the ever- 
reposing love in the soul. God eludes us in 

[791 



lyj nature to call us onward; in the soul He sur- 
renders Himself to gather us to His heart. This 
is why, in the realm of power, we grow by 
aggrandisement; but, in the realm of love we 
grow by renunciation. This is why though in 
our wordly ambition pride acts as an incentive, 
it is the greatest of all obstacles in our spiritual 
aspiration. 



[801 



IN a lyrical poem, the metre and the idea 
are blended in one. Treated separately, 
they reveal themselves as two contrary forces; 
and instances are common in which their nat- 
ural antagonism has not been overcome, thus 
resulting in the production of bad poems. 

We are the artists, before whom lie materials 
which are mutually obstructive. They contin- 
ually clash, until they develop into a creation 
perfect in unity. Very often, in order to shirk 
trouble and secure peace, we sacrifice one of the 
contending parties. This makes the fight 
impossible, but also the creation. The restless 
spirit of nature divorced from the souFs repose 
drives us to the madness of work which piles 
up towers of things. On the other hand the 
spiritual being deprived of its world of reality 
lives only in the exile of abstraction, creating 
phantoms in which exaggerations, unchecked 
by the strict necessities of forms, run riot. 



[811 



WHEN the man-made world is less an 
expression of man's creative soul than a 
mechanical device for some purposes of power, 
then it hardens and narrows itself, attains too 
definite a character, leading to proficiency at the 
cost of the immense suggestiveness of life. In 
his creative activities man establishes human 
relationships with his surroundings, making 
nature instinct with his own life and love. But 
with his utilitarian energies he fights nature, 
banishes her from his world, deforms and defiles 
her with the ugliness of his callous ambitions. 
This world of man's own manufacture with its 
discordant shrieks and mechanical movements 
incessantly suggests to him and convinces him of 
a scheme of universe which is an abstract sys- 
tem and which has no touch of the person and 
therefore no ultimate reality. 



82' 



WITH the truth of our expression we grow 
in truth. The truth of art is in the dis- 
interested joy of creation, which is fatally 
injured when betrayed into a purpose aUen to 
itself. All the great civilisations that have 
become extinct must have come to their end 
through some constant wrong expression of 
humanity; through slavery imposed upon fellow- 
beings; through parasitism on a gigantic scale 
bred by wealth, by man's clinging reliance on 
material resources; through a scoffing spirit of 
scepticism robbing us of our means of sustenance 
in the path of truth. 



[83 



CONSCIOUSNESS is the light by the help 
of which we travel along our path of life. 
But we cannot afford to squander this light at 
every step. Economy we need, and habit is that 
economy. It enables us to live and think with- 
out fully keeping our mind illumined. On 
festival nights we do not count the cost of our 
excess of light, because it is not for removing 
some deficiency, but for expressing the sense of 
our inner exuberance. And for the same reason 
habit becomes a sign of poverty in our spiritual 
life; for it is not a life of necessity, but of expres- 
sion. In our love, our consciousness has to 
remain at its brightest, in order to be true. For 
love is no mere carrying out of some purpose, it 
is the full illumination of consciousness itself. 



[84] 



IF we allow our act of worship to deaden 
into a habit, then it frustrates itself, stiff- 
ening into mere piety which is a calculated 
economy of love. For worship has its worth, 
not in the action, but in a perfect outflow of 
consciousness in which habit has the tendency of 
becoming an impediment. We grow worldly in 
our devotion when we imagine that it confers 
upon us some special advantage, thus causing 
pious habits to be formed and valued. For 
when it is a question of profit, buying in the 
cheapest market is the best wisdom; but when 
complete giving out is the sole object, then 
economy is cheating one's own self. 



[85] 



THERE is one thing which is common in the 
process of the physical and the spiritual 
life. In both it is essential that we must forget 
the seK. We know all the better what is around 
us by not having to remember our own selves at 
every step. When we are more to ourselves, 
then the world is less to us. But f orgetfulness of 
self in our ordinary hfe of usefulness is mostly 
negative, it is attained by habit. Not so in the 
spiritual life, where self is forgotten because love 
is there. It is like the individual word, losing 
its meaning where it is separate, but regaining 
itself all the more where it is one with the whole 
poem. In the spiritual life we forget our ex- 
clusive individual purpose and are flooded with 
the spirit of perfection which through us tran- 
scends ourselves. In this we feel our immor- 
tality, which is the great meaning of our life. 



[86] 



OUR nature being complex, it is unsafe to 
generalise about things that are human; 
and it is an incomplete statement of truth to 
say that habits have the sole effect of deadening 
our mind. The habits that are helpful are like 
a channel, which helps the current to flow. It is 
open where the water runs onward, guarding it 
only where it has the danger of deviation. 
The bee's life in its channel of habit has no 
opening, — it revolves within a narrow circle of 
perfection. Man's life has its institutions which 
are its organised habits. When these act as 
enclosures, then the result may be perfect, like a 
beehive of wonderful precision of form, but 
unsuitable for the mind which has unlimited 
possibilities of growth. 



[87J 



FOR the current of our spiritual life creeds 
and rituals are channels that may thwart or 
help according to their fixity or openness. When 
a symbol of spiritual idea becomes rigidly elabo- 
rate in its construction, it supplants the idea 
which it should support. In art and literature 
metaphors which are the symbol of our emo- 
tional preceptions excite our imagination but 
do not arrest it. For they never claim a monop- 
oly of our attention; they leave open the way 
for the endless possibility of other metaphors. 
They lose their artistic value if they degenerate 
into fixed habits of expression. Shelley, in his 
poem of the Skylark, pours out images which we 
value because they are only a few suggestions of 
the immeasurableness of our enjoyment. But 
if, because of their fitness and beauty, a law 
were passed that while thinking about a skylark 
these images should be treated as final and no 
others admitted, then Shelley's poem would at 
once become false; for its truth is in its fluidity, 
in its modesty, which tacitly admits that it has 
not the last word. 



THE other great body of ours is the world, 
with which this httle body of ours ever 
aspires to estabUsh a perfect relation of har- 
mony. Is it simply for the sake of some con- 
venience? Do our eyes try to see lest some 
danger or obstacle should come unawares in 
the dark, lest we might fail to find the things 
that are needful? No doubt these are powerful 
incentives, but the great fact lies in the delight 
of the meeting of our eyes with the world of 
lines, colours and movements. There is an 
incessant call from this universe of light, of 
sound, of touch, to our eyes, ears, to our limbs, 
and the response to it is a fulfilment which not 
only belongs to us, but to the great world. And 
this is the reason why from remote ages light 
incessantly knocked at the closed gates of life's 
bhndness, till after repeated efforts life opened 
its windows of sight, and the union of the two 
was perfected. This was a wedding whose 
highest meaning is in its joy. 



[89] 



WE have a mental body, which has its or- 
gans of thought and feeling. There is the 
great social mind of man with which it seeks 
its harmony, for the perfecting of which experi- 
ments are carried on without rest. This as- 
piration also has not its source in expediency. 
It is an impulse for union which drives our mind 
across our little home and neighbourhood to its 
love tryst abroad. It must unite with the great 
mind of humanity to find its fulfilment. The 
beehive is the product of the truth of the unity 
in the bee's life; but literature, art and politics, 
moral laws and religions, which have no end to 
their freedom of growth, are born of the wedding 
of the man with Man. 



[90] 



THE question is asked, if life's journey be 
endless where is its goal? The answer is, 
it is everywhere. We are in a palace which has 
no end, but which we have reached. By ex- 
ploring it and extending our relationship with it 
we are ever making it more and more our own. 
The infant is born in the same universe where 
lives the adult of ripe mind. But its position is 
not like a schoolboy who has yet to learn his 
alphabet, finding himself in a college class. 
The infant has its own joy of life because the 
world is not a mere roadj but a home, of which it 
will have more and more as it grows up in wis- 
dom. With our road the gain is at the end, but 
with this world of ours the gain is at every step; 
for it is the road and the home in one; it leads us 
on yet gives us shelter. 



[91] 



OUR life in the world is like listening to 
a song, to enjoy which we do not wait 
till it is finished. The song is there, in the 
singing from the very first note. Its unity 
permeates all its parts and therefore we do 
not impatiently seek the end, but follow the 
development. In the same way, because the 
world is truly one its parts do not tire us — only, 
our joy grows in depth with our deeper compre- 
hension of its unity. At the moment when our 
various energies are employed with the varied 
in the world of nature and of man, the One in us 
is growing up towards the One in all. If the 
many and the one, the endless movement and 
the eternal reaching of the goal, were not in 
harmony in our being, our existence would be to 
us like ever learning grammar, and yet never 
coming to know any language. 



[92] 



NATURE is a mistress who tempts us with 
liberal wages — so much so, that we work 
extra hours for the extra remuneration. Yet 
in the midst of this bribery and these tempta- 
tions man still cries for deliverance. For he 
knows that he is not a born slave and he refuses 
to be deluded into beUeving that to follow one's 
own desires unhindered is freedom. His real 
trust Hes in his growth and not in his accumula- 
tions. The consciousness of a great inner truth 
lifts man from his surroundings of petty mo- 
ments into the region of the eternal. It is the 
sense of something positive in himself for which 
he renounces his wealth, reputation, and life 
itself, and throws aside the scholar's book of 
logic, becoming simple as a child in his wisdom. 



[931 



IN fact, man wants to reach that inner 
region where he can take his stand in the 
perfection of his unity^ and not there where 
link upon link is forged, in an endless series, in 
the chain of things and events. 

But as our body seeks its harmony with the 
great world-body for its fulfilment, so the one 
in us seeks its union with the great One. The 
One in us knows itself, has its delight in itself 
and expresses itself in its activities. It is truth 
and joy and expression. Therefore its union 
with the highest One must be in wisdom, in 
love and in service. This is our religion, that is 
to say, our higher nature. Its purposes cannot 
be definitely pointed out and explained, for it 
belongs to that life in the spiritual world where 
our objects have their recognition in something 
which we vaguely try to describe as blessedness, 
— a state of perfection, which is an end in itself. 
It is easy for man to ignore it and yet live, but 
man never did ignore it. He doubts it, mocks it, 
and strikes it, he fails in his realisation of it, but 
even in his failures and rebellions, in his desper- 
ate attempts. to escape from it, he revolves round 
this one great truth. 
[94] 



A BLOCK of stone is unplastic, insensitive, 
inert, it offers resistance to the creative 
idea of the artist. But for a sculptor its very 
obstacles are an advantage and he carves his 
image out of it. Our physical existence is an 
obstacle to our spirit, it has every aspect of a 
bondage, and to all appearance it is a perpetual 
humiliation to our soul. And therefore it is the 
best material for our soul to manifest herself 
through it, to proclaim her freedom by fashion- 
ing her ornaments out of her fetters. The 
limitations of our outer circumstances are only 
to give opportunities to our soul, and by being 
able to defy them she realises her truth. 



[95] 



OUR living body in its relations to the physi- 
cal world has its various wishes. These are 
to eat, to sleep, to keep warm or cool, as neces- 
sity demands — and many others. But it has 
one permanent wish, which is deeper and there- 
fore hidden. It is the wish for health. It works 
every moment fighting diseases and making 
constant adjustments with changing circum- 
stances. The greater proportion of its activities 
are carried on behind our consciousness. He 
who has wisdom in regard to his physical welfare 
knows this and tries to establish harmony 
between the bodily desires that are conscious 
and this one desire which is latent. And he 
willingly sacrifices the claims of his appetites 
to the higher claim of his health. 

We have our social body in which we come 
into relation with other men. Its obvious 
wishes are those that are connected with our 
selfish impulses. We want to get more than 
others and pay less than is our due. But there 
is another wish, deeply inherent in our social 
life, which is concerned with the welfare of the 
community. He who has social wisdom knows 
[961 



this and tries to bring all his clamorous wishes 
about personal pleasure, comfort and freedom 
under the dominion of this hidden wish for the 
good of others. 

Likewise the obvious wish of our soul is to 
realise the distinction of its individuality, but 
it has its inherent wish to surrender itself in love 
to the Great Soul. 

The wish for health takes into account the^ 
future of the body. The wish for the social good 
also has its outlook upon the time to come. 
They face the infinite. The wish of our soul to 
be one in love with the Great Soul transcends all 
limitations of time and space. Thus in our 
body, society, and soul we find on the surface 
the activity of numerous wishes and in their 
depth that of the one will which gives these 
wishes unity, leading them to peace, goodness, 
and love. In other words, on the one hand we 
have the wishes of the moment, and on the other 
the wish for the eternal. It is the function of 
our soul to unite these two and build its heaven 
upon the foundation of the earth. 

[971 



A YOUNG friend of mine comes to me this 
morning to inform me that it is his birth- 
day and that he has just reached his nineteenth 
year. The distance between my age and his is 
great, and yet when I look at him it is not the 
incompleteness of his life which strikes me, but 
something which is complete in his youth. And 
in this differs the thing which grows, from the 
thing which is being made. A building in its / 
unfinished stage is only too evidently unfinished. 
But in life's growth every stage has its perfec- 
tion, the flower as well as the fruit. 



98' 



WHEN I was a child, God also became a 
child with me to be my playmate. Other- 
wise my imperfections would have weighed me 
down, and every moment it would have been a 
misery to be and yet not fully to be. The things 
that kept me occupied were trifling and the 
things I played with were made of dust and 
sticks. But nevertheless my occupations were 
made precious to me and the importance that 
was given to my toys made them of equal value 
with the playthings of the adult. The majesty 
of childhood won for me the world's homage, 
because there was revealed the infinite in its 
aspect of the small. 

And the reason is the same, which gives the 
youth the right to claim his full due and not to 
be despised. The divinity which is ever young, 
has crowned him with his own wreath, whisper- 
ing to his ears that he is the rightful inheritor of 
all the world's wealth. 

The infinite is with us in the beauty of our 
childhood, in the strength of our youth, in the 
wisdom of our age; in play, in earning, and in 
spending. 

1991 



THE beauty which is in this evening sky 
comprehends forces tremendous in their 
awfulness. Yet it reveals to us the harmony 
which must be in the centre of all world activi- 
ties, the harmony which has a still voice which is 
music itself. Because we are able to take view of 
this evening world where the distant and the 
near are brought face to face, we can see what is 
positively true in it — its beauty and unfathom- 
able peace. When, through death, the death- 
lessness of some great life is discovered, the same 
vision of peace is revealed to us. The profound 
soul of Buddha is brought before our minds like 
this evening sky, and through all his struggles 
and sorrows, through his compassionate toil for 
men, we see a perfect assurance and repose of 
strength which is beauty. In smaller men the 
field of life is too narrow and therefore contra- 
dictions are too exaggerated to permit us any 
complete view of truth. But we may be sure, 
that in the currents of their lives as they run 
beyond death these contradictions are harmon- 
ised, for truth is over all, and beauty is the 
expression of truth. 
[100] 



IN the Upanishad God is described as "The 
Peaceful, the Good, the One." His peace 
is the peace of truth which we clearly see 
in Nature. The earth moves and the stars, 
every cell is moving and working in this tree, 
every blade of grass in this field is busy, and 
every atom of this evening star is restless, but 
peace is in the heart of all this movement — this 
movement which is creative. The movement 
which lacks this inner peace destroys. God, as 
the Peaceful, is revealed to him who has at- 
tained truth in his life, the truth which is ever 
active and yet which has an immensity of repose 
born of the mastery of self. It is not the loss of 
energy, the waning of life, which is peace, but 
their perfection. 

An ignorant man finding himself in a factory 
for the first time in his life, is frightened at the 
bewildering medley of movements, but he who 
knows it is struck with admiration at the con- 
centration of purpose dwelling in its centre, 
unmoved. This takes away all misgivings, and 
the perfect correlation of activities appears as 
beautiful. This is the peace which belongs to 
truth. 

[1011 



IIFE is a flow of harmony that united the 
J in and the out, the end and the means, the 
what is and the what is to come. Life does not 
store up but assimilates, does not construct but 
creates, its work and itself .are never dissociated. 
When the materials of our surroundings are not 
living, when they are fixed habits and hoarded 
possessions then our life and our world become 
separated and their mutual discord ends in the 
destruction of both. Or when some unbalanced 
excess of passion takes predominance in the 
buildings of our own world its distribution of 
weight goes wrong, and it constantly oppresses 
the wholeness of our life. The source of all the 
great evils in society, in government, in other 
organisations is in the alienation of the living 
being from its outer habitation. The gulf thus 
created by the receding stream of soul we try to 
replenish with a continuous pour of wealth 
which may have the power to fill but not the 
power to unite. Therefore the gap is danger- 
ously concealed under glittering quicksands of 
things which by their own accumulating weight 
cause a sudden subsidence in the middle of our 
sleep of security. 
[102] 



THE world of senses in which animals live is 
limited. Our reason has opened the gate 
for our mind into the heart of the infinite. Yet 
this freedom of reason is but a freedom in the 
outer courtyard of existence. Objects of knowl- 
edge maintain an infinite distance from us who 
are the knowers. For knowledge is not union. 
Therefore the further world of freedom awaits 
us there where we reach truth, not through 
feeling it by senses or knowing it by reason, but 
through union of perfect sympathy. This is an 
emancipation difficult fully to imagine; we have 
but glimpses of its character. We perceive the 
fact of a picture by seeing it, we know about it 
by measuring its lines, analysing its colours and 
studying the laws of harmony in its composi- 
tion. But even then it is no realisation of the 
picture, for which we want an intimate union 
with it immediate to ourselves. 



103 



THE picture of a flower in a botanical book 
is an information; its mission ends with 
our knowledge. But in pure art it is a personal 
communication. And therefore until it finds its 
harmony in the depth of our personality it 
misses its mark. We can treat existence solely 
as a text-book furnishing us lessons and we shall 
not be disappointed. But we know that there 
its mission does not end. For in our joy in it 
which is an end in itself we feel that it is a 
communication, the final response to which is 
not the response of our knowing but the response 
of our being. 



[104] 



WHEN Buddha preached Maitri — the rela- 
tionship of harmony — not only with 
human beings but with all creation, did he not 
have this truth in his mind that our treatment of 
the world is wrong when we solely treat it as a 
fact which can be known and used? Did he not 
feel that its meaning can be attained only 
through love because it is an expression of love 
which waits for its answer from our soul emanci- 
pated from the bondage of self? This emancipa- 
tion cannot be negative in character, for love can 
never lead to negation. The perfect freedom is 
in a perfect harmony of relationship and not in a 
mere severance of bondage. Freedom has no 
content, and therefore no meaning, where it has 
nothing but itself. Soul's emancipation is in the 
fulfilment of its relation to the central truth of 
everything that there is, which is impossible to 
define because it is in the end of all definitions. 



[105] 



"lyrO flame burns for ever. Light goes out for 
-1. 1 want of oil, is puffed out by the wind, often 
the lamp itself is shattered. In our fit of irrita- 
tion we may say that the power of darkness is 
final and true, or that we create light ourselves 
by lighting the lamp. But the truth is that 
every extinction of light is to prove that the 
source of light is without end, and man's true 
power lies only in his ability to prove this over 
and over again. 



106 



I BELIEVE that there is an ideal hovering 
over and permeating the earth, — an ideal of 
that Paradise which is not the mere outcome of 
fancy, but the ultimate reality in which all 
things are and towards which all things are 
moving. I believe that this vision of Paradise 
is to be seen in the sunlight, and the green of 
the earth, in the flowing streams, in the gladness 
of springtime, the repose of a winter morning, 
in the beauty of human face and wealth of 
human love. Everywhere in this earth the 
spirit of Paradise is awake and sending forth 
its voice. It reaches our inner ears without our 
knowing it. It tunes our harp of life, urging us 
to send our aspiration beyond the finite, as 
flowers send their perfume into the air and 
birds their songs. 



[107 



OUR energies are employed in supplying 
ourselves with things and pleasures. They 
have no eternity in their background. There- 
fore we try to give things an appearance of 
permanence by making them big. Man in his 
anxiety to prolong his pleasure and power tries 
to make additions, and we are afraid to stop, 
because we fear that they must some day come 
to an end. 

But truth is not afraid to be small, to come to 
an end, — ^just as a poem, when it is jSnished, is 
not really dead. Not because a poem is com- 
posed of endless lines but because it carries an 
ideal of perfection. The pauses of truth has the 
cadence of the infinite, its disappearances are 
the processional arches on its path of immor- 
tality. 



[108: 



WE light the lamp in our room which 
creates a seeming opposition between it 
and the great outside world. Our hfe on the 
earth is like that small room in which our con- 
sciousness has been concentrated. And we 
imagine that outside it lies death which opposes 
it. But the one indivisible truth of existence 
which is for us must not be doubted because 
our life obscures it for a moment. 



[109 



THE vision of life which we see in the 
world is a vision of joy. The joy is in its 
ever flowing colour, music and dance. If there 
were truth in death this spirit of joy would 
vanish from the heart of existence. The lamp 
we light in the night has a wick which is small 
and oil which is very little. But there is no 
timidness in its tiny flame burning as it is in the 
heart of an immense darkness; for the truth of 
the light which sustains it is infinite. 



[110] 



THE world, like a stream of sounds in 
music, is a perpetual flow of forces and 
forms, and therefore from the outside it has an 
aspect of impermanence. There it represents 
death, being a continual current of losses. But 
the loss is only for the channel, the instrument 
through which music is made to pass. It is the 
unity of melody which ever survives the fleeting 
notes. If individual notes could claim a pro- 
longed endlessness then they would miss their 
true eternity which is the music. The desert 
has the quality of the immutable because it 
lacks life. In a soil which is fruitful, life reveals 
its immortality by its ceaseless passage through 
death. 



[Ill 



IT is given to us to reveal our soul, that 
which is One in us, which is eternal. This 
can only be done by its passage through the 
fleeting Many; to assert the infinity of the 
spirit by continual sacrifice of forms. The self 
being the vessel that gathers and holds gives us 
the opportunity of giving up. If we believe 
only in self then we anxiously cling to our 
stores which causes us misery and failure. 
When we believe in soul the very inconstancy of 
life finds its eternal meaning and we feel that 
we can afford to lose. 



Printed in the United States of America 



[112] 



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